February 3, 1913. Berlin. A Lecture given during the
First General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society at Berlin. This
translation by Christopher Bamford, as included in “The Effects of Esoteric
Development”, Anthroposophic Press, 1977, pp. 13 – 16.

My dear friends,

When we established the German Section of the
Theosophical Society in 1902, as many of our theosophical friends certainly
know, Annie Besant and other members of the Theosophical Society were present,
many of whom had been members for some time. Amid the work of organizing and
lecturing, I had to leave for a short time to continue a lecture course I was
giving. This was in a circle not at all connected to the theosophical movement,
and whose members, for the most part, have not joined it. In other words, more
than ten years ago, when the theosophical movement was established in Germany,
I had to give a lecture to a group outside it. That lecture course was a kind
of "beginning," and to describe what I wanted to say in it I used a
word that seemed to me to express this idea of "beginning" much
better than the word theosophy-a word that seemed much more in keeping with the
whole circumstances and culture of our time. Thus, while we were establishing
the German Section, I announced in my other lecture that what I had to impart
could best be communicated by the word anthroposophy.

This incident returns to my memory now, while we are
all assembled here and stepping aside from, and beginning to move alongside of,
what may naturally be called theosophy. We are thus obliged to choose another
name for our work. In the first place, this is just an external designation,
but also one that indicates precisely what we wish to do. Therefore, we choose
the word anthroposophy.

Spiritual observation into the inner spiritual
connection of things (which often contains some kind of necessity, even when it
all seems to be a matter of "chance" to ordinary observation) may
give us some insight. Therefore, perhaps the feeling I have will permit me -
especially today as we witness the separation of the Anthroposophical Society
from the Theosophical Society, and without setting up any careful transition -
to return to my necessary move ten years ago, from my activity in founding the
German Section, to my "anthroposophical" lecture. Nevertheless, no
change has entered what has formed the spirit of our work since then. Our work
will continue in the same spirit, for here we are unconcerned with any change
in our cause, but only with the change of name that has become necessary.

Perhaps the new name is one, after all, that rather
suits our cause, and, by mentioning my feeling about what happened ten years
ago, we may be alerted to the fact that this new name really could suit us very
well. Still, as I say, the spirit of our work will remain the same.

This spirit is actually something we must indicate in
essence, as the being of our cause. It is also what claims our best human
forces, insofar as we feel moved to join this spiritual movement. I say
"our best human forces" because our present time is not yet very
inclined to accept - whether theosophy or anthroposophy - what must be
introduced into the progressive spiritual life of humanity. I say
"must," because anyone who knows the prerequisites for the evolution
of the spiritual life of humanity knows just how necessary this theosophical or anthroposophical spirit is for a
healthy spiritual life. But it is difficult to convey the meaning of this to
human souls today.

It is difficult, and one can understand why that is.
Those who come directly into anthroposophy or theosophy from contemporary life
where, to begin with, all their thoughts are deeply connected with a more
materialistic view of things - find it very difficult to feel at home with the
way cosmic questions are handled by what may be termed the theosophical or
anthroposophical spirit. It has always been true, however, that most people
tend to follow those who make themselves the bearers of the spiritual life in a
special way. Certainly, we can find the most varied tones within our
contemporary worldviews. Equally certainly, however, after observing these
various shadings, one in particular stands out, namely, that most people today
follow - even if unconsciously - either certain concepts that have emerged from
the development of natural science over the past century, or a certain residue
of philosophical ideas, or both. In any case (we could call it pride, or it may
appear as something else) we find something certain, something that seems to be
built on solid foundations, both in what natural science has given us, or, when another kind of
path has been chosen, what one or another philosophy provides as an
orientation. In what flows from the anthroposophical or theosophical spirit,
however, one is likely to find something more or less uncertain, or wavering,
something unverifiable.

This may be experienced in different ways. For
instance, it is very common for an anthroposophical or theosophical lecture to
be held somewhere on a particular subject. Let us consider the auspicious
(though relatively rare) instance of a science or philosophy professor
listening to such a lecture. It could easily happen that, after listening to
it, the professor forms an opinion of what has just been heard. Indeed, in most
cases the professor would certainly believe that such an opinion was well
founded and solid - even, to some extent, simply self-evident. In any other
field of thought, however, it is just not possible, after hearing only a
one-hour lecture, to judge its subject. And yet, in relation to what theosophy
or anthroposophy offers, people are all too eager to make a snap judgment in a
way that deviates from their otherwise customary subtlety.

Indeed, they feel that their opinion is justified
after simply having engaged, perhaps unconsciously, in a monologue such as the
following: "I'm actually a pretty bright person, after all; I've worked
all my life to understand philosophical and scientific ideas, and therefore I'm
very capable of judging this or that question. After all, I have heard what the
person standing here has said." Then, having listened to our lecture - and
this is a fact of soul life that anyone who observes life knows to be true -
such a person arrives at the insight, "It's amazing how much I know and
how little the lecturer knows!" This person actually forms an opinion after listening to an
hour's presentation - not about what the lecturer knows, but more often about
what listener thinks the lecturer does not know, because it was not mentioned
in the lecture. Innumerable objections would fall away without such an
unconscious judgment.

Abstractly, or theoretically, it could seem quite
insane to state something so foolish - not foolish as an opinion but as a fact.
Yet, although people do not realize it, this fact is very widespread in
relation to what arises from theosophy or anthroposophy. Our age has, as yet,
little desire to discover that what anthroposophy or theosophy - at least as it
is meant here - presents to the public has nothing to fear from accurate,
conscientious examination by all contemporary sciences and learning, but everything to
fear from a "science" that is really only one-third - no, one-eighth,
one-tenth, one-twelfth, or perhaps not even that - scientific. It will take
time for human beings to be able to judge something as boundless as the world
itself through knowledge gained externally on the physical level. Nevertheless,
in time we shall see that the more true anthroposophy and theosophy are tested
with every possible scientific means and every individual science, the more they will
be verified.

And we shall also see that anthroposophy now enters
the world, not in an arbitrary way, but out of the precondition of historical
consciousness. This, too, will also be confirmed. Those who truly seek to
advance human development must draw what they wish to give from those sources
out of which the advancing life of humanity itself flows. Such people cannot
follow an arbitrarily constructed ideal and steer toward it merely because
it pleases them. In any given period, they must follow the ideal about which it
may be said, "This belongs precisely to our time." The being of
anthroposophy is intimately connected with the being of our time - not with our
own immediate little present moment, of course, but with the whole age within
which we stand. The next four lectures and, indeed, all the lectures that I
shall deliver in the next few days will really deal with this "being,"
or essence, of anthroposophy. All that I shall have to say later about the
nature of the Eastern and Western Mysteries will be an amplification of this being of
anthroposophy.

Today I want to point out the character of this being
by speaking of the necessity for establishing anthroposophy in our time. Once
again, I do not wish to begin with definitions or abstractions, but with facts
and, initially, one particular fact: the fact of a poem that was once - for now
I shall say only "once" - written by a poet. I shall read part of
this poem to you (just a few lines, to begin with) to bring out what I want to
say.

"Love, who commands the chambers of my mind

Discoursing of my lady passionately,

From hour to hour speaks things of her to me

At which my intellect bids me demur.

Sweetly his words make music of such kind

My soul, which hears and feels how they agree,

Exclaims, 'Alas, that I can never be

Equal to saying all I hear of her!"

And after the poet has sung further of the difficulty
of expressing what the god of love has said to him, he describes the being he
loves in the following words:

"Such things appear within her fair aspect

As show they bear the joys of paradise

I mean, both in her smile and in her eyes,

Where Love brings them as if he brought them home."

It seems very clear. A poet has written a love poem.
And it is certain that, if this poem were to be published anonymously somewhere
today (it could easily be a contemporary poem by one of our better poets),
people would say, "What a star he must have found to describe his beloved
in such wonderful verses!" And truly the beloved might well feel
congratulation at being addressed in this way:

"Such things appear within her fair aspect

As show they bear the joys of paradise

I mean, both in her smile and in her eyes,

Where Love brings them as if he brought them home."

This poem was not written in our time. If it had been,
and the critics discovered it, they would say, "What a deeply felt,
direct, concrete living relation! It is astonishing how someone who can write
poetry from the soul's depths, as only our most modern poets can, how such a
poet can say something in which no mere abstraction, but a direct, concrete
presentment of the beloved, speaks to us and becomes a manifest reality."
A critic today might say such a thing. This poem was not written today,
however, but was written by Dante. And the modern critic, knowing that now,
would perhaps say, "The poem must have been written by Dante when he was
passionately in love with Beatrice (or someone else), and this is another
example how a great figure enters life through immediate experience, far
removed from any concepts or ideas." Perhaps we could even find a modern
critic who would say, "People should learn from Dante the possibility of
rising to the highest celestial spheres, as we do in The Divine Comedy; and
still be able to feel a direct, living connection between one human being and another." As fortune would have it,
however, Dante himself wrote an explanation of this poem and identified the
woman about whom he wrote those beautiful words:

"Such things appear within her fair aspect

As show they bear the joys of paradise

I mean, both in her smile and in her eyes,

Where Love brings them as if he brought them home."

Dante himself told us - and I don't think any modern
critic will deny that Dante knew what he wanted to say - that the beloved lady,
with whom he had so direct and personal a relationship, was none other than Philosophy.
Dante says that when he speaks of the lady's eyes and says that what they say
is no lie, he means the evidence of truth; and by her "smile," he
means the art of expressing the truth communicated to the soul; and by
"love," or amor; he means scientific study – the love of the truth.
Dante explicitly says that when his personal beloved Beatrice was torn from him, and he was
required to continue without a personal relationship, it was the lady
Philosophy who drew near to his soul, full of compassion and more human than
any human thing. And - feeling in his soul's depths that her "eyes"
represent the evidence of truth, her "smile" the truth communicated
to his soul, and "love" the love of the truth, cognitive life, or
scientific study - Dante could say of this lady, Philosophy:

"Such things appear within her fair aspect

As show they bear the joys of paradise

I mean, both in her smile and in her eyes,

Where Love brings them as if he brought them home."

One thing is clear; a modern poet cannot easily
address philosophy with real honesty in such directly human language. If a
modern poet were to do so, the critics would seize that poet by the collar and
say, "No more formal allegories." Even Goethe had to suffer many
people taking the allegories in Part II of Faust in the wrong spirit.

People who do not know how the times - into which our
soul is ever growing with new life-change, lack any idea that Dante was just
one (among many) of those with the capacity for a concrete experience of a
passionate and personal relationship, immediate and of the soul, with Lady
Philosophy, such as we today can feel only toward a man or woman of flesh and
blood. In this sense, Dante's time is past. The modern soul no longer
approaches Lady Philosophy - the woman, Philosophy – as a being of the same,
fleshly nature as itself as Dante did. Or perhaps it is somewhat closer to the
honest truth to say that Philosophy was something, or someone, who went around as a being of
flesh and blood-someone with whom one could have a relationship, the expression
of which could not really be distinguished from the intense words of love one
would use in relation to a being of flesh and blood. Whoever enters into the
whole relationship Dante had with philosophy knows that this relationship was
concrete, the kind that modern human beings can only imagine between a man and
a woman.

In the age of Dante, then, Philosophy appears as a
being whom Dante says he loves. And, when we look for it, we certainly find the
word philosophy also coming to the surface in Greek spiritual life, but we will
not find there what we now call "definitions," the presentations of
philosophy. When the Greeks present something, it is Sophia, not Philosophia.
And they present her in such a way that, again, we experience her as a living
being, as an immediate presence. We experience the Greek Sophia as an immediate, living
being, just as Dante feels Philosophy to be. Always, however, we feel this
Greek Sophia - and I ask you to please go through the descriptions that exist -
to be an elemental force, as it were, an active being who intervenes in
existence through action.

Beginning around the fifth century A.D., we find that
Philosophia is first represented, initially described by poets in the most
varied guises: nurse, benefactor, guide, and so on. Then somewhat later,
painters begin to represent her. Thus, we reach the period during the Middle
Ages called Scholasticism, when many philosophers really felt they were
experiencing a directly human relation when they became aware of beautiful,
noble Lady Philosophia, who actually approached them from the clouds. Many
medieval philosophers, in fact, felt the same deep, burning feelings toward the Lady
Philosophia as she floated toward them on the clouds as Dante describes toward
his Lady. And anyone who can feel such things will find a direct connection
between Raphael's Sistine Madonna floating on the clouds, and the exalted Lady
Philosophia.

I have often described how, in ancient times of human
development, the world's spiritual relationships were still perceivable through
normal human cognitive capacities. I have tried to describe how there existed,
as it were, a primeval clairvoyance, how in primeval times everyone who
developed normally was naturally constituted to see into the spiritual world.
Slowly and gradually over the course of human evolution this primal
clairvoyance was lost, and our present cognitive situation arose. This occurred
slowly and gradually. And our contemporary life condition - which represents a
temporary and very deep entanglement, as it were, in a material kind of
perception – also came about gradually and slowly.

For a person such as Dante, as we may gather from his
descriptions in The Divine Comedy, it was still possible to experience
in a natural way, so to speak, the last remnant of an immediate connection with
the spiritual worlds. To modern people it is merely foolish nonsense to expect
that they might first, like Dante, love the Beatrice of flesh and blood and
then later become involved in a second passion with Philosophy, and that these
two - the Beatrice of flesh and blood and Philosophy - were very similar
beings.

It is true, I've heard it said, that Kant was once in
love, and that someone became jealous because Kant loved
"Metaphysics" and asked, "Meta who?"

Nevertheless, it is certainly difficult to bring
enough understanding to modern spiritual life to enable people to feel Dante's
Beatrice and Philosophy as equally real. But why is this? Because the once
direct, immediate relationship of the human soul to the spiritual world has
gradually come to what it is today. Those of you who have often heard me speak,
know very well the high regard I have for nineteenth-century philosophy, but even I
would not suggest that anyone pour out feelings for Hegel's Logic by saying:

"Such things appear within her fair aspect

As show they bear the joys of paradise

I mean, both in her smile and in her eyes,

Where Love brings them as if he brought them home."

It would be difficult, I think, to say this about
Hegel's Logic. It would even be difficult, though more possible, to speak this
way of the intellectual depth of Schopenhauer's worldview. It would certainly
be easier in his case, but even there it would still be difficult to get any
concrete idea or feeling that philosophy approaches as a concrete being in the
way Dante speaks. Times have changed.

For Dante, life within the philosophical element,
within the spiritual world, was a direct, personal relationship - as personal
as any relationship within what is called today the real, material world.

And, strange as it may seem-because Dante's century is
not so far from our own -it is nonetheless true that anyone who can observe the
spiritual life of humanity feels it as almost self-evident that, although we
try to know the world, if we assume that human beings have remained the same
throughout the centuries, we really cannot see any farther than the ends of our
noses! Even as recently as Dante's time, life in general - the whole relation
of the soul to the spiritual worlds - was very different. Thus, if philosophers
think that the relationship they may have with the spiritual world
through the philosophy of Hegel or Schopenhauer is the only one possible, this
only means that philosophers can still be very ignorant of the truth.

Let's consider what we have been presenting - that, in
our evolution until the present, with the transition from the Greco-Roman epoch
to our own fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the part of the whole human being that
we call the intellectual (or mind) soul, or the "soul of higher feeling,"
which developed especially during the Greco-Roman period, evolved into the
consciousness soul. In light of this observation, we may ask, therefore: How in
the concrete case of philosophy, does the transition from the intellectual soul
of the Greco-Roman epoch to the
consciousness soul of our time take form? It does so in such a way that we
clearly understand that, during the development of the intellectual soul - the
"soul of higher feeling" - humanity still experienced a certain
separation between human beings and the spiritual worlds from which they
originate. Thus, the Greeks confronted Sophia, or Wisdom, as a being, so to
speak, whom they could encounter standing before them in a particular place,
Two beings then -Sophia and the Greek - faced each other, as if Sophia were a
definite objective entity, to be looked at, with all the objectivity of the
Greek's way of seeing.

At the same time, however, the Greeks, because they
still lived in the intellectual soul (the soul of higher feeling), had to
express the directly personal relationship of their consciousness to the
objectivity of the being facing them. This was necessary to gradually prepare
the way for a new epoch, that of the consciousness soul.

How then does the consciousness soul confront Sophia?
This is done so that it brings the I into direct relationship with Sophia while
at the same expressing -much more so than the objective being of Sophia – the
activity of the I within the relationship between the consciousness soul and
this Sophia. "I love Sophia" was the natural feeling of an age that
still had to encounter the being we designate as Philosophy - an age that was
preparing the consciousness soul and, out of the relationship between the I and
the consciousness soul (on which the greatest value must be placed), was working toward
representing Sophia as simply as it represented everything else. It was natural
for the time of the intellectual soul - which was preparing for the
consciousness soul- to express this relationship to Philosophy. And because
things came to expression slowly and gradually, this relationship was being
prepared during Greco-Latin times.

Outwardly, however, we can also see this relationship
of human beings to Philosophia developing to a certain height in the
pictorial representations of Philosophy floating down on clouds and, later, in
Philosophia's expression (even if she bears another name) when we see her gaze
full of kindly feelings that once again express the relationship to the
consciousness soul.

In truth, it was from a specifically human personal
relationship, as of a man to a woman, that the relationship of human beings to
philosophy arose during the age when philosophy directly took hold of the whole
spiritual life of human evolution. This relationship - if you are not to take
these words lightly, but take a little time to find the meaning behind them -
has grown cold, truly cold. It has even become ice-cold. When we pick up most
books on philosophy today - even those by philosophers who struggled and
attained the finest possible relation to philosophy - we must really say that the
relationship, so ardent when people viewed philosophy as a personal being, has
grown very cold. Philosophy is no longer the "woman" she was to Dante
and others who lived in his time. Philosophy meets us today in a shape we may
speak of by saying, "The very form of philosophy that confronts us in the
nineteenth century, in its highest development - as German idealism, the
philosophy of concepts, the philosophy of Objects - shows us that its role in
the spiritual development of humanity has been played out." It is really very symbolic when
we take up Hegel's philosophy, especially The Encyclopedia, and find that the
last thing presented in this nineteenth-century volume is about how philosophy
understands itself. It has comprehended everything else; finally, it grasps
itself. What is left for it to understand? This is a symptom of philosophy's
end, even though - since Hegel's death - many questions remain unanswered. The
radical thinker Richard Wahle has followed this thought through in his book The
Whole of Philosophy and its End and he has ably worked through the thesis
that everything achieved by philosophy may be divided among the various
departments of physiology, biology, aesthetics, and so forth, and that when
this has been done, nothing remains of philosophy. Of course, such books go too
far, but they contain a deep truth - that spiritual movements have their time
and day, and that, just as a day has its morning and its evening, spiritual
movements, too, have their morning and evening in the history of humanity's development. We know we are
living in the age that is preparing the spirit-self. Thus, we know that, though
we live in the age of the consciousness soul, the spirit-self is being prepared.
Just as the Greeks lived in the age of the intellectual soul, and looked toward
the dawn of the consciousness soul, so we live in the age of the consciousness
soul and seek to prepare the age of the spirit-self The Greeks established
philosophy, which, despite Paul Deussen and others, did first exist in Greece
during the unfolding of the intellectual soul when human beings still directly
experienced the lingering influence of the objective Sophia; and
Philosophy then came into being, and Dante could view her as a real, concrete
being who brought him consolation when Beatrice was torn from him by death; in
the same way, we now live in the age of the consciousness soul and look toward
the dawn of the age of the spirit-self, and we know in this way that something
is again becoming objective to human beings - something that looks forward to
the coming times that will be gained by what we have won through the time of
the consciousness soul.

What, therefore, must be developed? It must unfold
that, once again, as a matter of course, a "Sophia" becomes present.
But we must learn to relate this Sophia to the consciousness soul, bring her
down directly to human beings. This is happening during the age of the
consciousness soul. And thereby Sophia becomes the being who directly
enlightens human beings. After Sophia has entered human beings, she must take
their being with her and present it to them outwardly, objectively. Thus, Sophia will be drawn into the human
soul and arrive at the point of being so inwardly connected with it that a love
poem as beautiful as Dante wrote may be written about her.

Sophia will become objective again, but she will take
with her what humanity is, and objectively present herself in this form. Thus,
she will present herself not only as Sophia, but as Anthroposophia – as the
Sophia who, after passing through the human soul, through the very being of the
human being, henceforth bears that being within her, and in this form she will
confront enlightened human beings as the objective being Sophia who once stood
before the Greeks.

Such is the progression of human evolutionary history
in relation to the spiritual questions we have been considering. Here I must
leave the matter to all those who wish to examine in even greater detail, following
the destiny of Sophia, Philosophia, and Anthroposophia, how we may show how
humanity develops progressively through those parts of the soul we call the
intellectual soul, the consciousness soul, and the spirit-self People will
learn how profoundly what anthroposophy gives us is based in our whole being.
What we receive through anthroposophy is our very own being.

This once floated toward us in the form of a celestial
goddess with whom we were able to enter into relationship. This divine being
lived on as Sophia and Philosophia, and now we can once again bring her out of
ourselves and place her before us as the fruit of true anthroposophical
self-knowledge. We can wait patiently until the world is willing to test the
depth of the foundations of what we have to say, right down to the smallest
details. It is the essence of anthroposophy that its own being consists of the being
of the human, and its effectiveness, its reality, consists in that we receive
from anthroposophy what we ourselves are and what we must place before
ourselves, because we must practice self-knowledge.